Women of Valor

Not all women were victims of the gravest economic crisis in the nation’s history. Many were talented fighters who helped to shape the response to the expression by government and labor, in public and private arenas. Sixteen of their stories—pieces of autobiography—have been gathered in this striking book. The women include Mary Simkhovitch and Lillian Wald, influential settlement leaders; Eleanor Roosevelt; Dorothy Day and Margaret Bourke-White, journalists who championed the poor and oppressed; Frances Perkins, Mary Anderson, Louise Armstrong, and Hallie Flanagan, who helped forge New Deal programs; Anzia Yezierska and Ellen Tarry, writers who found ways to survive; and Vera Weisbord, Ella Reeve Bloor, Meridel Le Sueur, Lucy mason, and Mary Heaton Vorse, all active in labor and political struggles. These extraordinary women confronted the problems that affected “ordinary” women. Their stories will rekindle interest in the Depression decade as a rich period in 20th-century women’s history.